Professionals in a wide range of fields frequently need to lift equipment, building materials, or other heavy objects above a ground surface in order to perform various tasks. Often times, construction projects require these professionals to lift and subsequently transport various equipment and/or building materials to and from the rooftops of buildings. This is especially true for those professionals working in the fields of roofing or heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) installation and repair. In some instances, heavy machinery lifting equipment, such as heavy-duty cranes with an attached cherry picker, hoist, and boom may be used to lift heavy materials. However, the time and expense associated with the transportation of such equipment to a desired location often renders the use of such heavy machinery largely impracticable. Additionally, the use of heavy machinery lifting equipment is not practical in many situations due to worksite accessibility problems. For instance, the oversized dimensions of most heavy machinery lifting equipment often exceed those afforded by smaller worksites or by pathways leading up to a worksite. Moreover, heavy machinery lifting equipment generally cannot be utilized in worksites having saturated or loose ground surfaces safely and/or without damaging the ground surface due to the intense weight of such equipment. Thus, as a result of the above-described issues, individuals often have to haul their equipment and/or building materials, often weighing hundreds of pounds, to roof tops or other elevated locations themselves, which can be extremely exhausting, time consuming, and dangerous.
A variety of non-heavy-machinery lifting devices designed for personal use or small-scale lifting jobs, e.g., such as hand trucks, car jacks, and small-scale boom and hoist devices, have been developed over the years. However, while such devices may sometimes provide improved portability over heavy machinery lifting equipment, such devices are not designed for commercial lifting applications, such as HVAC or roofing installation or repair. Known devices of this kind are generally designed to suspend and lower materials short distances—typically limited to a few inches or a few feet—and thus cannot be utilized in applications that require heavy materials to be transferred from a ground surface to a building's rooftop, or vice versa. Moreover, many such known devices are often configured as to only retain an assembled configuration, i.e., they cannot be readily disassembled to reduce the amount of storage space taken up by the device when the device is not in use. Additionally, those devices that can be disassembled often may only be done so through the aid and use of tools. As such, disassembling and subsequently reassembling such devices is a generally time consuming task, which renders such devices unsuitable for use in time-sensitive applications requiring the device to be transported and subsequently utilized across multiple worksites.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a portable lifting apparatus suitable for commercial lifting applications. Additionally, there is a need in the art for a portable lifting apparatus designed for rapid assembly and disassembly in order to reduce the space occupied by the apparatus when not in use.